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1 RUSI’s 2018 Land Warfare Conference: What do you want to know?https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/75089/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=Current%20Affairs&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=Current%20Affairs&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=Current%20Affairs
https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/75089/?talkMon, 18 Jun 2018 10:30:18 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=75089The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the world’s oldest security and defense think tank, will be hosting its annual Land Warfare Conference in London on June 19 and 20. The event will focus on the changing nature of land warfare in the 21st century, and will feature speakers such as General Mark Carleton-Smith, UK chief of the […]]]>

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the world’s oldest security and defense think tank, will be hosting its annual Land Warfare Conference in London on June 19 and 20. The event will focus on the changing nature of land warfare in the 21st century, and will feature speakers such as General Mark Carleton-Smith, UK chief of the general staff, and Dr Karin von Hippel, RUSI’s director-general (full schedule below).

WikiTribune will be attending the two-day conference – help shape our coverage. What interests you and what would you like to know?

Questions

How are conventional land forces coping with the rise of non-conventional weapons, tactics, and technologies, such as drones, cyber warfare, and urban warfare?

Are we actually moving toward artificial intelligence (A.I.)-powered military technologies and, if so, what are the risks and benefits they present?

How are traditional military alliances like NATO faring in today’s world, what are some of their main challenges, and how can they stay relevant in a world that presents very different dilemmas to the ones they faced when these alliances were made?

Are there any crucial skills that land forces are being trained in nowadays that weren’t on the radar 10 or 20 years ago?

Interviews

Who should WikiTribune talk to?

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/75089/feed/7Russia changes the rules of warfare, perfecting ‘hybrid war’https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/54989/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=chatham%20house&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=chatham%20house&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=chatham%20house
https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/54989/?talkWed, 14 Mar 2018 11:09:29 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=54989Russia under Vladimir Putin has become a leading exponent of military and non-military tactics to launch what would otherwise be war — a concept known as “hybrid war” – from the annexation of Crimea to social media misinformation and, apparently, the use of chemical weapons in Britain. Russia’s hybrid strategy combines military force and more […]]]>

Russia under Vladimir Putin has become a leading exponent of military and non-military tactics to launch what would otherwise be war — a concept known as “hybrid war” – from the annexation of Crimea to social media misinformation and, apparently, the use of chemical weapons in Britain.

Russia’s hybrid strategy combines military force and more subtle tactics designed to thwart the ambitions of rivals, according to Russian military officials and Western analysts who watch Moscow. Tactics deployed include the use of conventional and special military operations; propaganda; economic and diplomatic pressure; and assassinations.

At its heart is often a certain deniability – such as the “little green men” who appeared in Crimea and Ukraine without military identification but were clearly deployed by Russia. That’s a military manifestation of the hybrid strategy along with the use of pro-Russian militias to destabilize eastern Ukraine, not to mention the universal conclusion of American security agencies that Russia used social media and other non-lethal tactics to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections.

“The beauty of the Putin strategy is that it is tailored to individual countries, in particular individual ways. There isn’t one strategy for everyone,” said Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a security think tank.

“The purpose is the same: to keep the security situation in Europe fluid enough in order to allow Russia room for maneuver … It is in order to keep everyone on their toes,” Eyal told WikiTribune.

Hybrid war undeclared but very real

“‘Hybrid Wars’ blend the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare,” Hoffman wrote in a 2007 paper for the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, an independent research institute in Arlington, Virginia.

Russian general and current Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, Valery Gerasimov, later expanded on the idea, writing in 2013: “In the twenty-first century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template” (Original in Russian).

Although Gerasimov was talking about the changing nature of war in the 21st century, with an eye on confronting the concept of the Arab Spring and the “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia, and the Balkans where Russia saw the hand of the United States and European Union in stirring pro-democracy elements. Western analysts began to treat his essay as the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare playbook following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, according to The Financial Times(may be behind a paywall).

In response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Hoffman expanded his definition: “Sophisticated campaigns that combine low-level conventional and special operations; offensive cyber and space actions; and psychological operations that use social and traditional media to influence popular perception and international opinion.”

Old tune, new lyrics

Recently, hybrid warfare has included cyber attacks to cripple key infrastructure, theft of information, and the spread of misinformation; and fostering internal opposition to “create a permanent front in the entire territory of the opposing state,” according to Gerasimov.

Speaking to WikiTribune under the condition of anonymity, a retired senior military official described Russian hybrid warfare as “war below the line.” The Kremlin engages in complex campaigns that take place without crossing a military line compelling the nation or entity under attack to respond.

Russia’s objective, according to the same official, is to get away with everything it can until the target responds more vigorously, usually with a show of military force.

Russia employs hybrid methods of intervention that fall “below the threshold that would necessitate a conventional [military] response from our part,” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, director of the Paris office of The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), an American public policy think tank that promotes cooperation between North America and Europe. “In the NATO context, hybrid warfare is below Article 5,” she said, referring to the organization’s principle of collective defense which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.

Prime Minister May came close to invoking that NATO clause when she told parliament earlier this week that should Russia fail to respond to an ultimatum to explain how a USSR-created nerve agent was used in the attempted assassination of Skripal, which also severely injured his 33-year-old daughter Yulia, “we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.”

The Kremlin did not respond to May’s March 13 deadline and strongly denies any involvement.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on March 15, former NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen said activating Article 5 would be “disproportionate” but argued for further strengthening “selected direct sanctions” against individuals surrounding Putin and extending the duration of existing sanctions against the country.

“Whether cyber attacks in Denmark, assassinations in Salisbury, stirring up fears of immigrants in Central Europe, or election interference in Italy — these are all part of a wider strategy,” said Rasmussen. “We have all experienced some form of hybrid warfare and now is the time to fight back.”

How Russia uses hybrid warfare

Liudas Zdanavicius, a lecturer at the Military Academy of Lithuania, says the differences between Russia’s current and previous hybrid campaigns include the increased intensity with which the country is pursuing its goals and new technologies at its disposal that allow it to do so more effectively.

“The best case [study], of course, in the last years is Ukraine,” he told WikiTribune. “[What] we see in 2015 and 2014 is just a result of much longer years of preparation, with the propaganda, the infiltration, and other measures,” including the use of state-sponsored cyber attacks on target nations’ critical infrastructure (JSIS).

Apart from the Ukraine, Russia has been accused of deploying cyber attacks against the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – where it has disputes over Russian minorities, their closeness to NATO and their determination to deepen links with the European Union.

“The hybrid tactic (is) to try to destabilize a country or society from within” – Defense analyst

Russian hybrid warfare, or “interference,” can vary enormously in methods and objectives, depending on the country being targeted, said the GMF’s de Hoop Scheffer. Electoral interference, cyber attacks, the weaponization of energy policy, and the spreading of misinformation via social media and propaganda outlets are all part of Russia’s hybrid warfare playbook, she said.

“Maybe warfare is a word that has been used too much … I would call that hybrid interference, rather than warfare, interfere in all aspects of our society,” de Hoop Scheffer said. “It can be politics, it can be the economy, the energy sector, and it can in our daily lives.”

De Hoop Scheffer believes the attempted assassination of the Skripals fits Russia’s pattern of hybrid conflict: “It’s destabilization but from within … And that’s part of the hybrid tactic, to try to destabilize a country or society from within by using local communities or by using our internal vulnerabilities.”

“After all, if the sole purpose was to kill this individual, then they could have taken out a contract with organized crime and [have him killed] with a bullet to the head, or indeed a car crash, or a so-called heart attack,” RUSI’s Malcolm Chalmers told WikiTribune. “Instead they’ve used a banned chemical weapon in a public place which is bound to create fear in the wider community and the Russian community here, and in all likelihood would be attributed to the Russian state.”

These relatively new tools make it difficult for Western governments to formulate an effective, comprehensive strategy to counter hybrid campaigns. But Zdanavicius suggests two approaches: tackling “real fake news” head on; and promoting societal transparency and efficiency while combatting corruption.

“Which country is more resilient?” he asks rhetorically. “Corrupt, weak, with high social inequality and ethnic tensions? Or the country which has a successful development project?”

]]>https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/54989/feed/55Interview: Trump, Kim Jong-un summit breaks rules and could just workhttps://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/54368/?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=art%20of%20the%20deal&pk_campaign=RSS&pk_kwd=art%20of%20the%20deal&pk_source=RSS&pk_medium=RSS&pk_content=art%20of%20the%20deal
https://www.wikitribune.com/wt/news/article/54368/?talkFri, 09 Mar 2018 17:27:49 +0000https://www.wikitribune.com/?post_type=stories&p=54368After months of rhetorical brinkmanship and swapping graphic personal insults, U.S. President Donald Trump said he’s willing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un without preconditions and South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in says the aim could be to remove nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula. We spoke to an expert on nuclear proliferation to look […]]]>

After months of rhetorical brinkmanship and swapping graphic personal insults, U.S. President Donald Trump said he’s willing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un without preconditions and South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in says the aim could be to remove nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula. We spoke to an expert on nuclear proliferation to look at the chances of success.

Tom Plant, the director of proliferation and nuclear policy at the defense and security think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said any summit would begin a difficult process which diplomats know as “rapprochement” in which, he said, “the chances of it going wrong are always greater than the chances of it going right.”

WikiTribune: This isn’t the first time the United States and North Korean have engaged in these sort of talks (armscontrol.org). Should we expect a different result this time, and if so, why?

Plant: We should hope for a different result. But [we should] be very realistic about the prospect… Given the complexity of the situation in the Korean peninsula, all the different interlocking networks of relationships, a grand bargain is just not going to fix this… You’ve got to accept that a single one of these meeting isn’t going to fix these problems, or even reach a deal on any or all of them. This is a process rather than an end.

WikiTribune: Why are these relationships so problematic?

Plant: Every party will have red lines that don’t necessarily overlap with the others. So it’s a case of finding small areas where you can make progress now, and then in the future find other areas to make progress and so on to build something productive. But the chances of it going wrong are always greater than the chances of it going right. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be hopeful, it just means we should be realistic.

WikiTribune: So this might be the first step to some sort of understanding but not go the whole way to denuclearisation?

I find it hard to imagine. I’m always open to the possibility, and I’d loved to be proved wrong on this, but I just don’t think I’m going to be… I think what’s worth emphasising as well is less the summit and more the process that leads up to it, if it ends up happening at all… What is discussed and even agreed at that summit should be, to a very great extent, have come about beforehand.

WikiTribune: So if both leaders go into the summit with their own set of demands without having laid down the ground rules the whole affair might lead dissolve into pandemonium?

That’s absolutely bang on.

WikiTribune: Why do you think Kim is negotiating now?

In his New Year’s statement, he nodded to the fact that the state-nuclear force was supposed to be complete. I’m not surprised that he’s in dialogue mode now – I hate using this kind of “cycles” argument for North Korea: the strategy of provocation, offering reconciliation and then breaking the deal and starting again. But it does look quite a lot like that. So let’s hope that it’s not this time, but it probably is.

WikiTribune: Could the Iranian nuclear deal be something decision-makers might be looking to for inspiration?

If the model of the Iran deal was applied to North Korea, then the U.S. and its allies would be pretty happy because the amount of access involved would far beyond anything North Korea has committed to do. The difference with the Iran deal is that it’s not quite the same because Iran never produced nuclear weapons. It did produce low-enriched uranium. So there are differences there. But let’s just say that North Korea somehow rolled back to the state Iran is in now. To me, that looks like a win. The North has never been willing to offer even anything approaching that level of transparency or verification. It’s not even been willing to offer the level of transparency associated with verification in countries that are not under the same scrutiny as Iran, so there’s just a whole long way for North Korea to be able to accept the provisions. It’s a totally different landscape.

WikiTribune: This might be too early to say, but do you think Kim Jong-un has outmanoeuvred Trump on this issue? Sort of applied, if you want, Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’ against him?

Time will tell. On the summit issue, the U.S. has committed to a meeting at a place and time to be determined. That’s quite vague. I’ve been very critical of Trump and the administration’s messaging about Korea and toward Korea in the past. I don’t think that would be fair this time. I think their response has been OK. Over the last year, Kim Jong-un has played his hand well and the U.S. has played its alliance hand, in particular, poorly. But we’re in a new year now and this is a new situation.